P9 P92 

I Copy I 



A SKETCH 



OF 



GENERAL ISRAEL PUTNAM 



BY 



ALFRED P. PUTNAM, D.D. 



^ 



SALEM, MASS. : 

EBEN PUTNAM. 

1893. 




A SKETCH 



OF 



GENERAL ISRAEL PUTNAM 



ALFRED P. PUTNAM, D.D. 



SALEM, MASS. : 

EBKN rUTxVAM 

1S93. 




E^Zo7 



:fQ'po2j 



printed at 
The Salem Press. 



.^ 



A SKETCH 



GEN. ISRAEL PUTKAM. 



ALFRED P. PUTNAM, D.D. 



Major General Israel Putnam^ was born , January 7 , 1 7 18 , in a house 
which is still standing on its original site, near the eastern base of Ha- 
thorne or Asylum hill, in Dan vers. It has several times been enlarged 
and is still in an excellent state of preservation. Its first proprietor was 
his grandfather Thomas, whose second wife was Mary Veren, widow 
of Nathaniel Veren, a wealthy merchant of Salem. Their only child 
was Joseph, who inherited the homestead. Joseph wedded Elizabeth 
Porter, daughter of Israel and Elizabeth (Hathorne) Porter, and grand- 
daughter of John and Mary Porter, the emigrant progenitors of the 
Porters of Essex county. From this marriage sprang the soldier whose 
history we are to trace. Elizabeth Hathorne was a daughter of Major 
William and Ann Hathorne, whose country seat was where the Dan- 
vers Asylum now stands, on the hill above mentioned. Nathaniel Haw- 
thorne, the celebrated novelist, was also a lineal descendant. John 
Porter, likewise, was of " Salem Village, "now Danvers. For many 

'Major-General Israel {Joseph, Thomas, John), born in Salem Village, now 
Danvers, 7 Jan., 1717-18; baptized 2 Feb., 1718; died Brooklyn, Conn., after an 
illness of two days, 29 May, 1790; married, first, at Danvers, 19 July, 1739, Hannah, 
daughter of Joseph and Mehitable (Putnam) Pope of Danvers, born there; bap- 
tized 3 Sept., 1721; died Brooklyn, Conn., 6 Sept., 1765, in the 44th year of her age; 
married, second, 3 June, 17G7, the widow Deborah (Lothrop) Gardiner. Madame Gar- 
diner was daughter of Samuel and Deborah (Crow) Lothrop of Norwich, Conn., and 
widow of John Gardiner, fifth proprietor of Gardiner's Island, who died 19 May, 1764. 
She died at Putnam's Headquarters at Fishkill on the Hudson, 14 Oct., 1777, and was 
interred in Beverly Robinson's family vault. Mr. Gardiner she had married as his 



4 ISKAEL PUTNAM. 

years he was deputy in the General Court, first from Hingham and then 
from Salem ; and, as the Colonial Records testify, he was a man " of 
good repute for piety, integrity and estate." 

The ancestry of the future soldier- patriot, in various lines, is thus 
seen to have been of Essex County stock. His later boyhood was prob- 
ably spent in Boxford at the home of his step-father, Capt. Thomas 
Perley, while yet he would be a frequent visitor at the Putnam homes 
in Dauvers. His early education was defective, partly because school 
advantages were then very meagre in the rural district in which he passed 
his youth, and partly, no doubt, because his strong natural inclinations 
were for farming and active out-of-door life, rather than for books and 
sedentary occupations. Robust and full of energy, he was as a boy given 
to sports, and to feats of strength and daring ; and numerous trustworthy 
traditions of his courageous exploits in those days have been handed 
down in the old home from then until now, somewhat prophetic of his 
more extraordinary prowess and achievements in maturer years. Having 
attained an age when he would care for a share of his father's farm, he 
returned to Dauvers and settled upon the portion set otf to him, and 
here built a small house, the cellar of which yet remains. On the 19th 
of July, 1739, he married Hannah, daughter of Joseph and Mehitable 
(Putnam) Pope. The spot is still pointed out, not far from that of his 
nativity, where stood the humble habitation in which for a brief period 
the young couple dwelt, and in which their first child, Israel, was born. 
Shortly afterward, they removed to Pomfret, Conn., boi'ue on by the 
continued tide of emigration that had already carried a large number of 
settlers into the eastern part of that state from towns about Massachu- 
setts bay. There at length he was the head of a numerous family of chil- 
dren, some of whom removed to other parts of New England or to the 
west, their descendants being now widely scattered abroad through the 

second wife, 21 Nov., 1755, being then the widow of Eev. Ephraim Avery of Pomfret. 
The children of Mr. Gardiner by Deboi-ah (Lothrop) Avery were //are?m/i, born 31 Dec, 
1757; married Samuel Williams of Brooklyn; died s. p. Septimus, b. 28 Dec, 1759; 
died unmarried 1 June, 1777. He was with General Putnam during many of his cam- 
paigns. 
Children, all by his first wife : 

Israel, b. Danvers, 28 Jan. ; bapt. there 8 June, 1740. 

David, b. Pomfret, Conn., 10 Mar., 1742; d. y. 

Hannah, b. " " 25 Aug., 1744. 

Elizabeth, b." " 20 Mar., 1747; d. y. 

MEHiTABLE.b." " 21 Oct., 1749. 

Mary, b. " " 10 May, 1753. 

Eunice, b. " " 10 Jan., 1756. 

Daniel, b. " " 18 Nov., 1759. 

David, b. " " 14 Oct., 1761. 

Peter Schuyler, b. Pomfret, Conn., 31 Dec, 1764. 



ISRAEL PUTNAM. 

country. The ancient homestead in Danvers has heen occupied by suc- 
cessive generations of his brother David, "the lion-hearted Lieutenant 
of the King's troops," as he has well been called. 

In 1739, Israel, and his brother-in-law, John Pope, bought of Gov. 
Jonathan Belcher, a tract of land of about five hundred acres, of which 
he became sole owner in 1741. It was part of a large district known as 
the"Mortlake Manor," which, while it had special privileges of its own, 
was included in the territory that in 1786 was detached from Pomfret 
and erected into a separate and distinct township under the name of 
Brooklyn. Certain foundation stones, and a well and pear tree, have 
long marked the place where our brave pioneer built for himself his first 
house in Connecticut. Here was the family home, until larger accom- 
modations were required, when he built the plain, but more commodious 
and comfortable house to which the domestic scene was transferred and 
in which many years afterward the old hero died. This, with its narrow 
cham1)er in which he l)reathod his last, is still standing and is an object 
of great interest with patriot-pilgrims who year after year visit it from 
afar. From the outset, his fondness for agriculture and horticultural 
pursuits was conspicuously shown in the vigorous way in which he sub-' 
dued and cultivated his land, and introduced into Pomfret and its neigh- 
borhood all its best varieties of fruit trees, while it is chiefly due to his 
taste, sagacity, and enterprising spirit that were planted the long lines 
of ornamental trees which have graced the streets and added so much to 
the beauty of Brooklyn. Although at first the exemptions which the 
owner of Mortlake Manor enjoyed created a jealousy among the inhabi- 
tants of Pomfret and rather estranged him from participation in their 
affairs, yet his sterling worth was early recognized and his public spirit 
became more and more manifest. He was among the foremost in es- 
tablishing good schools in the town and did not fail to ensure to his 
sons and daughters a higher education than he had received himself. 
Before he entered upon his military career, he joined other leading 
settlers in a library association which had a marked efi'ect in developing 
a love of reading among the people and in elevating their general char- 
acter.' He was not only a thrifty and highly prosperous farmer, but, 
from first to last, he was also an earnest and helpful friend of all the best 
interests of the little, but growing colony. 

The familiar story of his entering the wolf-den, together with the 
accounts of his many other bold adventmes in his earlier manhood, 
needs not to be repeated in this brief sketch of his life. The late Hon. 
Samuel Putnam, a native of Danvers and judge of the Supreme Court ot 
ISIassachnsetts, Avrote, in a letter to Col. Perley Putnam of Salem, July 
16, 1834 : — "I was once in his house in Brooklyn where he treated me 



b ISRAEL PUTNAM. 

with great hospitality. He showed me the place where he followed a 
wolf into a cave and shot it, and he gave me a great many anecdotes 
of the war in which he had been engaged before the Revolution, trac- 
ing the remarkable events upon a map." 

In 1755, there was a call upon the New England colonies and New 
York for a large military force for the relief of Crown Point and the 
regions about Lake George, where the French had gained a strong foot- 
hold. The quota from Connecticut was to consist of a thousand soldiers. 
Though it would require him to leave behind a large property and a 
numerous family, Putnam was prompt and quick to respond to the sum- 
mons. Brave, energetic and popular, he was at once appointed to the 
command of a company, which he soon succeeded in recruiting for Ly- 
man's regiment, under the supreme command of Gen. William Johnson 
of New York. He received his "first baptism of fire and blood" in the 
unsuccessful encounter of Col. Ephraim Williams and his twelve hun- 
dred men with the enemy under Baron Dieskau, in the forests between 
Fort Edward and Lake George. This defeat of the provincials was soon 
followed by a brilliant victory, in honor of which Johnson built a fort, 
named Fort William Henry, on the spot where it was won. The autumn 
of 1755 was spent in constructing defences and in opening means of com- 
munication between difierent parts of the immediate country. As win- 
ter approached, most of the men returned to their homes, but enough 
remained to garrison the fortresses. Putnam's regiment was disbanded 
with the rest, and he himself returned to Pomfret to spend the season 
with his family. The next year witnessed a renewal of the campaign, 
the entire forces being under the command of General Abercrombie. 
Putnam was reappointed as captain, to serve as before in Lyman's regi- 
ment. During the service which he rendered in all this war against the 
French and their Canadian and Indian allies, he acquired a great reputa- 
tion as a soldier and hero, by his dauntless spirit and marvellous deeds. 
These, taken in connection with his many perilous exposures, severe 
hardships, and hairbreadth escapes, gained for him swift and repeated 
honors from the Legislature of his adopted state, and made him immense- 
ly popular with all classes of his countrymen. The accounts of them, 
as given more or less fully by his biographers, Humphreys, Peabody, 
Cutter, Hill and various others, are no doubt exaggerated in some par- 
ticulars. ^ But enough is true to warrant the fame and distinction that 
were then and subsequently accorded to him in abundant measure. In 
1757, he was promoted to be major. He had previously connected him- 
self with the famous baud of rangers, whose chief was the notorious 

iQen. Rufus Putnam, who was a soldier in the Massachusetts contingent, kept a diary which has 
been printed and which corroborates Humphreys' narrative. 



ISRAEL PUTNAM. 7 

M.'ijor Robert Rogers. Near the time of tlie oiit1)rcak of the revolution, 
this remarkable hunter, scouter and roving adventurer, notwithstanding 
all his ardent promises and professions of loyalty and devotion to the 
cause of the colonies, went over to the Briti.sli and received from them 
an appointment as colonel. His volume of "Journals" makes but very 
few and slight allusions to Putnam, who on one occasion had saved his 
life and who had borne so conspicuous a part with him in their hard and 
hazardous campaigning; and this circumstance, together with tlio fact 
that some of his friends and apologists grew to be virulent defamers of 
his gallant comrade, makes it quite evident that no very strong tie of 
trust or affection united the two. Putnam could hardly have had much 
confidonce in such a strange and lawless man as Rogers, and Rogers 
must have found little that was congenial to him in such a true-hearted 
and straightforward man as Putnam, whatever they may have had in com- 
mon as free and fearless rangers. Here, in this capacity, they were still, 
as Colonel Humphreys says, "associated in traversing the wilderness, 
reconnoitering the enemy's lines, gaining intelligence and taking strag- 
gling prisoners, as well as in beating up the quarters and surprising the 
advanced pickets of their army." 

On the 3d of August, 1757, Montcalm, the French commander, ar- 
riving with a large force from Ticonderoga, laid siege to Fort "William 
Henry, whose, surrender after six days was followed by a dreadful mas- 
sacre of the garrison. Putnam had vainly endeavored to procure rein- 
forcements from Fort Edward. His saving the powder magazine of 
Fort Edward, amidst the teri'ible conflagration that visited it, was one of 
the numerous daring deeds which he accomplished. . His descent of the 
falls of the Hudson, at Fort Miller, and his happy escape from a strong 
party of Indians who fired at him incessantly as he skilfully steered his 
bateau down the dangerous rapids, was another of his characteristic 
achievements, which made his savage foes think that he was under the 
special protection and smile of the Great Spirit. Yet he was not so 
successful in escaping their barbarities, when once he w^^s in their power. 
For it was about the same time, in 1758, that, in one of the forest ex- 
peditions in which he and Rogers and five hundred men were engaged, 
they took him prisoner and subjected him to the most brutal treatment. 
Judge Putnam's letter, which we have already quoted, states that they 
tied him to a tree to be put to death according to their custom under such 
circumstances, and then goes on to say : "They threw their tomahawks 
into the tree by the side of his head, and after amusing themselves in 
this way for some time, they lighted up the fire, and danced and yelled 
around him. When they were thus engaged, one of the tribe, a chief, 
who had been once a prisoner of Putnam and treated kindly by him, ar- 



8 ISRAEL PUTNAM. 

rived on the spot, and, recognizing his friend in their intended victim, 
immediately released him from impending slaughter. Gen. Putnam said 
that their gestures in the dance vrere so inexpressibly ridiculous that 
he could not forbear laughing. I expressed some surprise that he could 
laugh under such circumstances, at which he mildly replied that his 
composure had no merit, that it was constitutional ; and said that he had 
never felt bodily fear. I can as easily credit that assertion as the one 
Gouverneur Morris made of himself, viz. : that heneverfelt embarrassed 
hy the 'presence of any one whomsoever, in his life; and I am inclined to 
think that both of them spoke the truth concerning their own sensations.'* 
The wounds which these cowardly savages inflicted upon the fearless but 
helpless sufierer left scars which he long afterward carried Avith him 
to the grave. The almost incredible outrages and tortures which they 
perpetrated upon him were not brought to an end by the cutting of the 
cord that bound him to the tree, but were still continued, in other forms, 
all the while they marched him through a rugged country to Ticonderoga 
and thence to Montreal. There Col. Peter Schuyler, who had been held 
a prisoner in that city, hearing of his miserable condition, hastened to his 
rescue, supplied him with clothing and other necessities, and managed 
to procure his release. Putnam's tenth and last child was born after- 
ward and he named it in grateful honor of this noble friend and bene- 
factor. Nor was this the only kindness which the generous man rendered 
at this juncture. Among those whom the Indians had made captives 
Avas a Mrs. Howe, whose first and second husbands the redmen had 
murdered and the story of whose wretched lot under her inhuman mas- 
ters is familiar to Aii^srican readers. Schuyler paid the price of her 
raqsom and entrusted her to the care of Putnam, who, on his return, 
safely conducted her beyond the reach of her persecutors. 

In pursuance of a plan of 1759, to expel the French from their Ameri- 
can possessions. General Wolfe was to lead an expedition against Que- 
bec, General Prideaux one against Fort Niagara, and General Amherst 
another against Ticonderoga and Crown Point. Putnam, who had now 
been raised to the rank of lieutenant colonel, was with Amherst and 
assisted him in the reduction of both the objects or places of his med- 
itated attack, being subsequently employed at Crown Point in strength- 
,ening its defences. In 1760, the British having captured Quebec, Am- 
jherst projected another expedition against Montreal, in which Putnam 
again accompanied him and rendered important service. The city, with- 
out resistance, capitulated at the formidable approach, and Canada was 
soon lost forever to the French. In 1762, the conquerors turned their at- 
tention to the French and Spanish possessions in the West Indies, 
France and Spain having entered into a coalition with each other. Mar- 



ISRAEL PUTNAM. 9 

tinique cand the Ciiril)])ees were taken, and a naval force often thousand 
men landed on the island of Cuba. Presently a reinforcement of two thou- 
sand menarrived, half of the number being a regiment from Connecticut 
^nder the command of General Lyman. Putnam was with him as on 
previous occasions, and was ere long placed at the head of the regiment 
from his own state, Lyman being appointed to take charge of the whole 
body of these provincial troops. The former had been cool and courage- 
ous during a fearful gale which had been encountered at sea, and on 
reaching shore he was busy and efficient in constructing accommodations 
for the soldiers. In due time the British Commander, Albemarle, be- 
sieged one of the strong fortresses of Havana and stormed the city, 
which finally surrendered, and with it a large part of Cuba temporarily 
became a possession of the power that had now well-nigh gained the mas- 
tery of the continent. In 1 7G3 a Treaty of Peace was concluded between 
France and England. On the northein frontier there was still some 
trouble from the Indians under Pontiac, the great chief of the Otta- 
was. The next year, Amherst sent forces to occupy several of the 
more important posts and avert the threatened danger. Under Colonel 
Bradistreet, Putnam, who had himself now been promoted to the rank 
of colonel, marched to Detroit with a Connecticut regiment of four 
hundred men. The savages soon dispersed, and all sounds or signs of 
war were finally at an end. 

The year 1764 fcnmd the veteran again at home. Nearly a whole 
decade he had spent in fighting the enemies of his country. Forest, 
mountain, valley, river, lake and sea had witnessed his arduous service. 
It had given him a very wide, varied and valuable experience. It had 
been full of heroic deeds and romantic adventures and incidents ; full of 
duties and responsibilities faithfully discharged, and of dangers and trials 
nobly met and overcome. After his original appointment as captain, he 
had been three times promoted. He had been under the command of 
some of the ablest and most celebrated generals of his time, and had 
been intimately associated with officers and patriots of high distinction. 
He had seen many parts of the land, and much of Indian as Avell as 
colonial life, and his activities had extended from .Montreal to Havana. 
At every stage of his service, from first to last, he enjoyed the absolute 
confidence of his superiors and of his state, and was always in demand. 
How, under all these circumstances, his quick eye, his sagacious mind, 
his superabundant energies and his natural soldierly qualities and apti- 
tudes, were trained for other and greater military trusts and perfor- 
mances, coming events were destined to show. What has thus far been 
written of him may well be remembered, as he appears before us in 
more momentous scenes. 



10 ISRAEL PUTNAM. 

More than smother decade was to follow, however, before his advent 
there. Shortly after he exchanged the sword for the ploughshare and 
once more began to engage in his peaceful agricultural pursuits, the be- 
loved wife of his youth and the devoted mother of his large family of 
children, died; and it was in the same year, 1765, that the husband 
and father, who had always, like his ancestors, been a sincere and faith- 
ful attendant upon public worship, united with the church at Brooklyn 
which was then under the pastoral care of Eev. Josiah Whitney, and 
made a formal profession of his Christian faith. It was during this year, 
also, that the news of the passage of the infamous Stamp Act reached the 
colonies and aroused them to stern protest and resistance. Putnam was 
foremost in making its execution impossible in Connecticut, and from 
that hour he stood forth as a ready and resolute defender of the im- 
perilled liberties of the people. In 1767, two years after the death of 
his first wife, he married INIrs. Deborah Gardiner, who was the widow of 
John Gardiner, Esq., the fifth proprietor of Gardiner's Island, and who 
accompanied him in most of his campaigns of the Revolution, until her 
death in 1777 at his head -quarters in the Highlands. For a time he 
threw open his house for the accommodation of the public, and one of 
his biographers says ; "The old sign, which swung before his door, as a 
token of good cheer for the weary traveller, is now to be seen in the 
Aluseum of the Historical Society of Connecticut, at Hartford." During 
the interval of time from the close of the French and Indian war to the 
outbreak of hostilities between England and her American colonies, he 
received many marks of confidence from his fellow citizens, attesting 
what they thought of his capacity, judgment and good sense, for muni- 
cipal or civil functions also. He was placed on important committees ; 
was elected moderator of the town meeting ; was thrice chosen a mem- 
ber of the board of selectmen, the last time in 1771 ; and was deputy to 
the General Assembly. In the winter of 1772-73, he went with Gen- 
eral Lyman and others to examine a tract of land on the Mississippi, 
near Natchez, which the British government had given to the men of 
Connecticut who had suffered greatly from exposures and hardships 
during the West India campaign, of which a brief account appears above. 
They also visited the Island of Jamaica and the harbor of Peusacola. 
There is still extant, in the possession of one of his descendants, a curi- 
ous diary, "probably the longest piece of writing that he ever executed," 
which Putnam kept in his absence, and in which he jotted down, hastily 
and imperfectly, many of his own and the party's experiences by the 
way. 

Immediately prior to the Revolution, Putnam held various conversa- 
tions in Boston with General Gage, the British commander-in-chief. Lord 



ISRAEL PUTNAM. 11 

Percy and other officers of the royal troops, quartered in that cit}-, and 
told them phiinly his opinion, that, in the event of war between England 
and her American colonies, the former could not subjugate the latter, 
while he gave them to understand, clearly, that he himself should side 
with the cause of the patriots. In 1774, the enemy were strengthening 
their forces there and were thus subjecting the inhabitants to manifold 
privations and embarrassments. Bancroft relates how Putnam rode to 
Boston with one hundred and thirty sheep as a gift from the Parish of 
Brooklyn, and "became Warren's guest and every one's favorite." Soon 
after his return to Connecticut, an exaggerated rumor reached him of de- 
predations of the British in the neighborhood he had just quitted, where- 
upon he aroused the citizens of his state to a fiery determination to 
avenge the attack. Thousands were quickly on their way to Massachu- 
setts for this purpose, but the extraordinary excitement sul)sided when 
it was ascertained that only a powder magazine between Cambridge and 
Med ford had been captured. 

The news of the l)attle of Lexington, April 19, 1775, arrived at Pom- 
fret by express on the morning of the twentieth. The intelligence reached 
Putnam as he was ploughing in the field, with his son Daniel, who was 
then but sixteen years of age, and who afterward wrote ; "He loitered 
not, but left me, the driver of his team, to unyoke it in the furrow, 
and not many days aft6r to follow him to camp." Having doubtless 
made haste to consult with the authorities, the old soldier received in the 
afternoon the tidings of the fight at Concord and at once set out on 
horseback for the scene of hostilities, riding a distance of well nigh a 
hundred miles. He was in Caml)riclge on the following morning, and 
also in Concord, writing from the last-named place under date of April 
21, the second day after the battle, to Col. Ebenezer Williams of Pom- 
fret :— 

"Sir, I have waited on the Committee of the Provincial Congress, and 
it is their determination to have a standing army of 22,000 men from 
the New England Colonics, of which, it is supposed, the Colony of 
Connecticut must raise GOOO." And he urges that these troops shall be 
"at Cambridge as speedily as possible, with Conveniences ; together with 
Provisions, and a Sufficiency of Amnmnitiou for their own use." From 
Cambridge he wrote again, on the 22nd, for troops and supplies to be 
forwarded without delay. On the next day the Provincial Congress 
took definite action for raising a New England army, having already 
sent delegates to Rhode Island, New IIami)shire and Connecticut to re- 
quest their cooperation, and having now alreadv established a Cam}) at 
Cambridge, with Gen. Artemas Ward as commander-in-chief. On the 
26th, the Committee of Safety issued a circular letter appealing to the 



12 ISRAEL PUTNAM. 

colonies to iiid in the common defence ; and on the third of May, the 
immortal Warren, as President of the Provincial Congress, wrote to 
the Continental Congress, earnestly pleading the great peril and need 
of Massachusetts, saying that she had resolved to raise a force of her own 
of 13,600 men and was now to propose corresponding action by the 
other New England colonies, and suggesting an American Army "for 
supporting the common cause of the American colonies." No effort was 
wanting to give to what some writers have called an "army of allies," a 
truly patriotic spirit and a most eflfective and consolidated union. Any 
suggestion or indication, that, under such circumstances, Massachusetts, 
who appealed so piteouslyfor help, was to arrogate to herself privileges 
and honors that might not be shared as well by the colonies which she 
called to her assistance, would have made the mustering army but "a 
rope of sand." 

The appeal was of a nobler character and it was not in vain. New 
England responded to it with alacrity. Stark and Reed came with their 
New Hampshire regiments and fixed their head-quarters at Medford, the 
whole forming substantially the left wing. Troops arrived from Rhode 
Island under the command of General Greene and were stationed at 
Jamaica Plain, while General Spencer with his First Connecticut regi- 
ment and with two thousand Massachusetts men was posted at Roxbury 
and Dorchester, the whole constituting the right wing, under Gen. John 
Thomas. Putnam, with his Second Regiment from Connecticut and 
with Sargeant's Regiment from New Hampshire and Patterson's from 
Massachusetts, was assigned to Cambridgeport, where he and his men 
formed a part of the centre, whose main body, composed of numerous 
Massachusetts regiments, was under the immediate command of General 
Ward at old Cambridge. Our Pomfret hero, soon rfthis prompt ar- 
rival on tlie 21st of April, had been called back to Connecticut to assist 
in raising and organizing the quota from that state, whose legislature 
now appointed him to be Brigadier General. He was absent only one 
week, and, as he set forth again to join the new army, he gave instruc- 
tions that the troops should follow him as quickly as possible. His post 
at the centre, where he occupied the Inman House as his head-quarters, 
was an exposed one, and was deemed to be of special importance from 
the apprehension that the British might there make their first or chief 
attack. While he was here, he served at one time as commander-in- 
chief, during a temporary absence of General Ward in Roxbury. On 
another occasion he led a large body of the troops which had then gath- 
• ered in Cambridge, numbering a])out 2,200 men from Massachusetts 
and New Hampshire, to Charlestown, marching them over Bunker Hill 
and Breed's Hill, and into the main street of the town, and then back 



ISRAEL PUTNAM. 13 

again to the encampment, so as to inspiro them with more conficlciico 
and courage. He himself thus came to know still belter the ground 
where he was soon to be a conspicuous actor. 

' Oil the 27th of jNIay, he commanded a party of Provincials sent to 
Chelsea to drive off the live stock on Hogls.land and Noddle's Island in 
the harbor, so as to prevent it from falling into the hands of the enein\-. 
They were attacked by a force of the British marine appearing with a 
schooner and sloop, but were completely successful in the hot engage- 
ment that ensued, oidy one of the Americans being killed and four 
wounded, while the loss on the other side, it is said, was twenty killed 
and fifty wounded. The victors seized the abandoned schooner, and, 
. having taken possession of her guns, rigging and other valuables, set her 
on fire. In this expedition, General Putnam was accompanied by Dr. 
Warren, who went as a volunteer. On the sixth of June, these two pa- 
triot friends, under the escort of Captain Chester's Connecticut company, 
proceeded to Charlestown to effect an exchange of prisoners taken in one 
or more encounters. Having acconiplished their object in a manner 
highly creditable to all concerned, they returned to Camln'idge. Put- 
nam was now more popular than ever. The Continental Congress caught 
the enthusiasm of the people and soon raised him to the rank of Major 
General. It conferred the honor upon Artcmas "Ward and Charles Leo 
on the 17th of June, the day of the battle of Bunker Hill, and upon 
Israel Putnam and Philip Schuyler, on the 19th, two days after it, not 
knowing at the time about the great conflict at Charlestown, even as such 
of these ofl5cers as were cnijiiijcd in the strife were not aware of their 
promotion until the eventful day was quite of the past. 

On the 15th of June, the Massachusetts Committee of Safety recom- 
mended to the Council of War, that "Bunker Hill be maintained by suf- 
ficient force being posted there," as it was supposed that the encm}' were 
about to make a movement in that direction. The Council of War met 
on the following day and approved the plan, though Ward and Warren 
opposed itas a rash and perilous measure. Among those of the council 
who strongly favored it, Putnam was foremost and Gen. Seth Pomeroy 
was also prominent, the former believing it to be necessary as a means 
of drawing the enemy out from Boston and bringing on an engagement, 
the people being impatient for action. On the evening of that day, the 
16th, a detachment of about 1000 men, comprising three regiments under 
Colonels Prescott, Frye and Bridge respectively, and nearly 200 Con- 
necticut troops taken principally from General Putnam's regiment at 
Cambridgeport, together with Capt. Samuel Gridley's artillery company 
of forty-nine men and two field-pieces, was sent forth to occiqiy Bun- 
ker Hill and there intrench. Col. Samuel Swett's Ilistor}- of the Battle, 



14 ISRAEL PUTNAM. 

which was first published in 1818, and which, as the fullest and best of 
all the earlier accounts of it, came to be regarded as of "classical author- 
ity" and to serve as the "basis" of all reputable subsequent sketches, 
says : "General Putnam, having the general superintendence of the ex- 
pedition, and the chief engineer, Colonel Gridle}^^ accompanied the 
detachment." After they had passed the Neck and reached the peninsula, 
a halt was made at Bunker Hill, when a consultation of the officers was 
held, and it was decided to push on to Breed's Hill and intrench there 
instead. Arriving at the summit of that eminence, the ground haviug 
been laid out by Putnam, Gridley and Prescott, the men began at mid- 
night to throw up a redoubt, eight rods square and six feet high, with a 
breastwork extending from its northeast angle a hundred yards or more 
over the brow and down to a point near the base of the hill, in the direc- 
tion towards the Mystic river. As soon as the British discovered at 
sunrise what the Provincials had done during the night, they at once 
opened fire on the small fort from their ships in the harbor and from 
Copp's Hill in Boston. Putnam, who had readily divined the need, 
had proceeded at earliest dawn to Cambridge for reinforcements and pro- 
visions, but, hearing the first firing of the guns, he immediately started 
back for Charlestown. Perhaps it was about this time during the day, 
that he wrote to the Committee of Safety the following message, of which 
the original copy is in the possession of Hon. Mellen Chamberlain : 
"By the bearer I send you eighteen barrells of powder which I have 
received from the Gov. and Council of Connecticut for the use of the 
army ;"-— a much needed and most timely gift which his energy had pro- 
cured for the emergency. The men at the redoubt had toiled long and 
hard, and wanted rest as well as refreshments, while yet the breast- 
work was not completed. The authorities at headquarters had promised, 
on the previous evening, that the detachment should be relieved in the 
morning, and, in fact, early on that next morning General Ward had 
accordingly ordered another detachment of regiments o take its place, 
with three new colonels, Nixon, Little and Mansfield, to command them, 
instead of Prescott, Frye and Bridge ; but, what with the well-known 
dilatoriness that then marked the conduct of affiurs at Cambridge, these 
fresh troops were not required to parade and march until late in the 
afternoon. Meantime there was growing discontent at Breed's Hill. Thp 
soldiers applied to some of their officers, who in turn appealed to Pres- 
cott. The Colonel refused to send for the promised relief, but on a 
second appeal he consented to send for reinforcements, and dispatched 

1 Colonel Richard Gridley, who was a veteran of the French wars, was Chief Engineer of the army 
and planned the works on Breed's Hill. He afterward rendered distinguished service and received 
thei;ank of Major.Geueral from the Continental Congress. 



ISRAEL rUTNAM. 15 

Mnjor, afterward Governor, Joliu Brooks, to Cambridge to procure 
them, Putnam himself hastening thillicr again about the same time, or 
earlier, to eflect the result. Ward hesitated, from fear that the prin- 
cipal attack would yet be made nearer at hand, in which case all avail- 
able forces would be needed there. Finally, though reluctantly, lu; 
ordered a third part of Stark's regiment, or about 200 men under Colonel 
Lyman, to march to Charlestown. Afterward, through the strong in- 
fluence of Richard Devens, in the Committee of Safety which was then 
in session, he was prevailed upon to order the remainder of the Now 
Hampshire troops to the scene of action. Putnam's post was at Bunker 
Hill. He had seen from the start, as others did not then, but as all see 
now, how imperatively necessary it was to fortify that eminence as well 
as Breed's Hill, as the former was situated nearer the Mystic and the 
Neck than the latter, and so might be made instrumental in preventing- 
the enemy from flanking the redoubt, or might serve as a safe retreat 
in case the fort itself should have to be abandoned. He saw the chief 
point of danger and the one key of the situation. There he could best 
survey the whole scene and superintend its general operations. Under 
his command, various parties which he took from Prescott's detach- 
ment, and from the New Hampshire forces as they arrived, Avere soon 
employed in throwing up on Bunker Hill the intrenchments he was so 
anxious to construct. In anticipation of an aggressive movement on the 
part of the enemy, whose barges had landed several thousand troops at 
Moulton's Point, at the eastern end of the peninsula, the Americans were 
set to work in constructing the famous rail-fence which forms so impor- 
tant a feature in any satisfactory account of the battle. It extended 
about 600 feet, in a northwesterly direction, from near the northern end of 
the breastwork, at the base of Breed's Hill, towards the eastern slopes of 
Bunker Hill, and thence for about yOO feet northward to the Mystic river. 
It was especially the latter section of it that was now sought to l)e made 
a barricade against the foe, as it came to be evident to Putnam that there 
was not time to complete his intrenchments on the hill in the rear. It 
was formed by placing portions of fence-work near each other in parallel 
lines and by stuffing between them and capping them wilh new-mown 
hay from the immediate vicinity, the work being chioily wrought by 
the men from New Hampshire and Connecticut, who with others were 
to line it in the hour of action. Stark and his men wore at the ex- 
treme left of the lines, by the Mystic ; Reed was at his right ; and next 
to him, at the right again, were Captain Knowlton and his Connecticut 
braves, while still further towards Breed's Hill were parts of Massachu- 
setts regiments and companies, Prescott being in immediate command 
of the redoubt, at the extreme right. With the more extended tiold as 



16 ISRAEL PUTNAM. 

just indicated, he had nothing to do. As Mr. Eiohard Frothingham, 
the historian, candidly admits : "Colonel Prescott was left in uncon- 
trolled possession of his post. Nor is there any proof that he gave an 
order at the rail fence or on Bunker Hill." Of the supreme command, 
the late Mr. W. W. Wheildon, who w^as exceptionally familiar with all 
these local history matters, writes : "Of course, this could only be as- 
sumed by a superior officer, and this officer, beyond all question, would 
be General Putnam," who "necessarily became commander of the Battle 
and very sensibly and satisfactorily left Colonel Prescott in full com- 
mand of the redoubt." 

Soon after three o'clock. General Howe, the British commander, led 
on his formidable double column of grenadiers and light infantry solidly 
against the rail -fence and the yeomanry who were there, while the fire 
of his left wing under Pigot was kept up on the fort as a feint to divert 
the attention of the Provincials from the more serious point of attack. 
Putnam, who had charged his men "not to fire until they saw the white 
of the enemy's ej'es, " and to take good care to pick off the officers by 
aiming at their waistbands, was now, as in all the action, at the front, 
assigning fresh troops their places as they arrived, riding back and forth 
along the lines, encouraging his soldiers to be valiant and faithful, and 
exposing himself to the greatest peril. Tremendous as was the onset, 
it was in vain. The proud foe w%as hurled back with fearful confusion 
and destruction. Again the British General rallied his forces and made 
another and most vigorous and determined assault. Putnam, during 
;the lull, had ridden over Bunker Hill to urge on the expected, but tardy 
re-info rcements, yet wnth little eflfect. He returned to be once more 
conspicuous in the fight, and again there was a gallant and eflTective 
repulse, "as murderous as the first." Here, along these more exposed, 
unsheltered lines, was the most protracted and terrible fighting of the 
day. Said Stark, "The dead lay as thick as sheep in a fold." Then it 
was that the enraged enemy, who had thus twice been foiled in their 
efibrts to flank the redoubt, directed their main force against the redoubt 
itself, enfilading the breastwork, storming the height, rushing into the 
little enclosure and furiously assailing the greatly reduced garrison. It 
became a hand-to-hand and bloody, but unequal contest. Prescott soon 
ordered a retreat, and the escape of his surviving heroes was followed 
by the flight of the cowardly "reinforcements" who had kept aloof from 
the strife and had rendered no service during the day. The colonel pur- 
sued his sad way to Cambridge to report to Ward that the battle was lost. 
Seeing that the redoubt had been taken, Putnam and what was left of the 
main body of the army, who had been so brave and stubborn, were also 
obliged to retreat from the rail-fence. In vain he passionately besought 



ISRAEL PUTNAM. 17 

and sternly commanded his men to make one stand more on Bunker 
Hill. Finding this impossible, he led them forth to Prospect Hill, ^vhere 
he intrenched that same day in full sight of the eneniy. There he was 
still recognized by the central authority as the leader of the host. Im- 
mediately and repeatedly. General Ward sent him reinforcements from 
Massachusetts regiments, until he had in a short time not less than four 
or five thousand men under him, at that impcn-tant point. ^ 

Though compelled to surrender his post, Prescott was an admirable 
soldier. His only military distinction, previous to the Revolution, had 
been that he bad served as lieutenant under General Winslow in the 
conquest of Nova Scotia and had been urged by British officers to accept 
a commission in the royal army. But this latter he had declined to do. 
His experience in war had been quite limited. As General Heath, w^ho 
praised him highly, said, he was "unknown to fame." However merit- 
orious his conduct as the immediate local commander at the redoubij 
comparatively little contemporaneous or subsequent mention was made 
of him in connection with the battle of Bunker Hill. He Avas never pro- 
moted, but continued for two years to serve in the army, for a part of 
the time at least under Putnam himself. He then retired to his home 
in Pepperell, where among old friends and neighbors he was still hon- 
ored and useful to the end of his days. That such an unknown and 
inexperienced man should have been singled out for the supreme com- 
mand of so hazardous an enterprise, when there w^ere on the ground a 
half dozen or more generals who ranked him, and who were quite as brave 
and competent and far more trained and distinguished, and that he should 
have been charged with the responsible trust instead of Putnam, who 
was not only his superior in office and service both, but who was first to 
suggest and the most strenuous to urge the movement, is to the last de- 
gree improbable. 2 

Owing to the secrecy wnth which the original detachment and expe- 
dition w^ere partially veiled, and to the fact that Warren had been recently 
'appointed Major General and was actually in the battle, it was for some 

1 stark and his brave New Hampshire men had withdrawn to Winter mil. 

'(;ol. Sanniel Adams Drake, tlie eminent historian, in his admirable pamphlet, entitled. General 
Israel Putnam, the Commander at Bunker FIUl, says: ''He (Putnam) was a veteran of the arni^ cam- 
paigns. Beyond question he was the foremost man of that army in embryo which assembled at Cam- 
bridge after the Battle of Lexington. Not Ward, or Thomas, or Pomoroy, or even the lamented 
Warren, possessed its coufldence to the degree that Putnam did. Mr. Frothingham truly says he 'had 
the confidence of the whole army.' Nature formed him for a leader; and men instinctively felt it." 
And with reference to the Cattle of Charles^towu Heights, he adds: "He alone, showed the genius 
and grasp of a commander there. In posting his troops, in his orders during the action, and in his A-uit- 
less endeavor to create a new position on Hunker Hill;" and "in estimating tlie services of General 
Putnam and Colonel Prescott, from a military view, the former must receive the award as tlie com- 
manding officer of the field." In connection with this matter of the Bunker Hill controversy, the very 
able and keen discussion of the subject by Rev. Increase N. Tarbox, D.D., embraced in his Life of 
General Putnam, also deserves special mention. His argument, like Drake's, seems to us unau« 
swerable. 



18 ISRAEL PUTNAM. 

time supposed by many that he, the illustrious patriot-martyr, must have 
led the American forces. As he came on the ground, Putnam offered 
him the command, which he refused, not having yet received his com- 
mission and having come only as a volunteer. He repaired to the re- 
doubt where Prescott tendered him his own command, but this also he 
declined. The erroneous impression, as to his supremacy, gradually 
wore away as the facts became more and more known. Not Prescott, 
but Putnam, was hailed far and near as the hero of the hour.'/ At home 
and abroad, toasts were drunk to his honor, and engravings and other 
pictures of him appeared in American and European cities, represent- 
ing liim as chief; and as such he i)as3ed into history, as numberless 
'newspapers, poems, orations, school-books and chroniclers have borne 
witness. As never before, he was now the idol of the people. Yet it was 
this "unbounded popularity" and the high promotion that accompanied 
it, which he never meanly sought for himself or begrudged to othei-s, 
that inspired with a feeling of envy and jealousy certain military officers 
whose unfriendly spirit was never wholly repressed or .concealed while 
yet he lived, but broke forthwith peculiar violence long after his death 
and when most of those who knew him best and loved him most were in 
their graves. We shall have occasion to refer to this matter again, at 
the conclusion of our story. 

What Washington thought of General Putnam and what he probably 
thought of his action and preeminence in the battle of Bunker Hill, he 
that runs may read, in the events which it remains to outline. On the 
2d of July, the "Father of his Country" arrived at Cambridge, as the 
commander-in-chief of the American Army. He brought with him the 
commissions for the four distinguished officers who have been mentioned 
as having been promoted by the Continental Congress to be Major Gen- 
erals. They occasioned much "dissatisfaction" and "disgust" among 
those who thought that their own claims to honor had been overlooked. 
The commissions of Ward, Lee and Schuyler were withheld for a time 
in consequence. But Putnam's, which alone had received the unani-' 
mous vote of Congress, was presented at once by Washington's own 
hand. Some of the offended officers threw up their commissions in the 
army by reason of tUe fancied slight, but were ere long persuaded to 
return to the service. 

In the reorganization of the army, which was to carry on the siege 
of Boston, Washington gave to Putnam the command of the centre, near 
himself at Cambridge ; to General Ward the command of the right 
wing at Roxbury and Dorchester ; and to General Lee that of the left 
wino-, toward the Mystic river. In the autumn Putnam fortified Cobble 
Hill and Lechmere's Point. In March, 1776, Washington appointed 



ISRAEL PUTNAM. 19 

him to head a formitlable force of 4,000 men in an attack on the British 
lines, but the plan was frustrated by a most violent storm, which pre- 
vented the boats from landing the troops. During the night of the 16th 
of the same month. Nook's Hill, a Dorchester height nearest Boston 
and commanding it, was fortified, and such was the advantage which 
was thus gained by the ])eleaguering host, that the next morning the enemy 
evacuated the city, and, boarding their vessels, put to sea. Putnam, 
with a strong force, immediately entered the town and took possession of 
all its important posts amidst the exultant shouts and cheers of its long- 
suffering people. 

Washington, having previously learned that the British meditated an 
attack on New York, had already sent General Lee thither to construct 
a system of defences for the protection of that city. These works, after 
the departure of General Lee for the south, were pushed forward by Lord 
Stirling, a brigadier in the American army. Under the apprehension 
that the British fleet, which had sailed from Boston, would soon appear 
in New York harbor, Washington forwarded his troops with all possible 
despatch to that point, ordering Putnam to go on and temporarily take 
the command while he himself was to follow shortly after. Putnam, 
on the 7th of April, sent Colonel Prescott's Bunker IIIU regiment and 
otiier parties to take possession of Governor's Island and erect on it a 
breastwork, and also a regiment to fortify Red Hook on the Long Island 
shore, directly across the narrow channel, so as to hinder more effect- 
ually any operations of the enemy's ships in that quarter. The battle 
of Long Island took place a few months later. In the latter part of 
June, the British landed in great numbers on Staten Island, and in 
Auijust crossed over to Lonof Island and advanced towards the American 
lines that extended across the Brooklyn peninsula from Wallabont Bay 
to Gowanus Creek. General Sullivan had been in command on that 
side of the East river, but was now superseded by Putnam, to whom 
Washington thus again gave proof of his trust and confidence. Putnam 
retained Sullivan at the centre to guard the passes and fight the Hessians. 
Both of them accompanied Washington as, having come over from New 
York for a brief visit, he rode towards evening on the 26th of August 
down to the outposts and examined the situation of affairs. The fierce 
eniragement came on duringr the iiextraorninsr, and it was while the two 
armies were in deadly conflict, that General Clinton, who during the 
niirht had led a column of 10,000 British soldiers by a long, circuitous 
and lonely road at the distant left, where be was guided by a few lo- 
ries, suddenly appeared at the rear of the Americans and overwhelmed 
them with disaster, Stirlino' who was fiiihtinc: Grant far at the riffht 
sharing: in the common misfortune. The wonderful retreat to New York 



20 ISRAEL PUTNAM. 

of Washington and his shattered army amidst the darkness and fog of 
the succeeding night, is too well known to call for details in this connec- 
tion. Certain writers, without just warrant, have blamed Putnam for 
the defeat because he did not anticipate and prevent Clinton's move- 
ment. The most exact, thorough and impartial, and altogether the 
best account of the battle, is that of Mr. Henry P. Johnston, as con- 
tained in his " Campaign of 1776," published in 1878, as Vol. iii of the 
"Memoirs of the Long Island Historical Society." That careful and 
conscientious writer says that such au accusation against Putnam is "both 
unjust and unhistorical." . . . "No facts or inferences justify the 
charge. No one hinted it at the time ; nor did Washington in the least 
withdraw confidence from Putnam during the remainder of the cam- 
paign." He adds that the responsibility cannot be fastened upon Put- 
nam, who had just taken the command, "any more than upon Washington, 
who, when he left the Brooklyn lines on the evening of the 26th, must 
have known precisely what dispositions had been made for the night at 
the hills and passes." He then proceeds to show how the responsi- 
bility, if it falls on any one, falls on Sullivan, and on Colonel Miles and 
his regiment, whose duty it was to guard the left. 

In occupying New York after the retreat, Washington assigned to Put- 
nam the command of the city as far up as Fifteenth street, while Spen- 
cer and Heath were to guard the island from that point to Harlem and 
King's Bridge. On the 15th of September, five British frigates appeared 
and took position in Kip's Bay, on the east side, opening a tremendous 
fire upon the breast-work and lines of Colonel Douglas with his 300 Con- 
necticut militia and his battalion of levies. The Colonel's panic-stricken 
forces fled in all directions, nor could the desperate and almost super- 
human exertions of Washington and Putnam, who were soon on the 
ground, avail to stay their flight. Other New England troops quickly 
joined in the stampede, and from all points the Americans were soon 
flying in wild disorder towards Harlem Heights, except that General 
Putnam "was making his way towards New York when all were going 
from it," his object being to rescue Sullivan's Brigade and some artillery 
corps that were still in the city and conduct them to the place of safety. 
This was successfully accomplished, and Col. David Humphreys, who 
was the earliest biographer of Putnam and who was in the army and saw 
him frequently during that day, says : "Without his extraordinary exer- 
tions, the guards must have been inevitably lost and it is probable the 
entire corps would have been cut in pieces." 

The battle of Harlem Heights took place on the next day, the fugi- 
tives having been vigorously pursued by the British. The advantage 
was with the Americans, and General Greene, referring to the engage- 



ISRAEL PUTNAM. ^1 



ment, said that Putnam was "in the action and behaved nobly." In the 
battle of White Plains, Washington sent Putnam with a detachment to 
the support of McDougall, but not in season to succor him before his 
safe retreat. Subsequently he sent him to command 5,000 troops on the 
west side of the Hudson river, for the protection of Gen. Greene who 
was there at Fort Lee, and who it was feared might be attacl^ed by the 
enemy. The speedy capture of Fort Washington on the east side by 
the British, was the direst calamity to the American cause in all the 
Revolutionary War. As the commander-in-chief led his wasted army 
across the Jerseys, hotly pursued by the foe, he sent Putnam forward 
to take command of Philadelphia which was supposed to be in danger, 
and construct fortifications for its defence. Colonel Humphreys, who 
was still with Putnam, gives a glowing account of his herculean labors 
and <rreat success in this work, attended as it was with manifold obsta- 
cles °and discouragements. While he was thus engaged, Washmgton 
crossed the Delaware and soon won his brilliant victories at Trenton and 
Princeton, which electrified the country and raised the spirits of the 
tired and dejected army. As the loss of Philadelphia was now no longer 
feared, Putnam was stationed for the winter at Princeton, whence he 
made various expediti6ns against foraging parties of the enemy, taking 
nearly a thousand prisoners, more than 120 baggage wagons and large 
quantities of provisions and other booty. 

It was now of prime importance to seize and hold the Highlands on the 
Hudson. In May, 1777, a commission, consisting of Generals Greene, 
Knox, McDougall, Wayne and George Clinton, Governor of New York, 
were directed to proceed thither, examine the defences, see what was 
needed, and report accordingly. This they did, and among the various 
works which they recommended was an enormous boom or cham across 
the river at Fort Montgomery, with other obstructions at that point, to 
bar the ascent of the enemy's ships. Washington gave the command of 
the region to General Putnam, who fixed his headquarters at Peeks- 
kill, on the east side of the Hudson, and whose troops were from New 
York and New England. But on the 12th of June, just as he began to 
execute the plan of the commission, he was ordered to forward most of 
his men to Philadelphia which was now again threatened by General 
Howe. At the same time he was obliged to hold various regiments in 
readiness to march against Burgoyne, who was expected at any moment 
to come down from the north. Again and again Washington called upon 
him for detachments for the Delaware, directing him to reinforce himself 
by militia recruits from the neighborhood or from Connecticut. What 
with these many changes, the presence around him of watchful foes, in- 
cessant marches and countermarches, and the miserable condition of his 



22 ISRAEL PUTNAM. 

soldiers, so many of whom were new and raw, Putnam's situation was 
painfully perplexing. Some of his men deserted and others he deemed 
it advisable to dismiss from the service which they wished to abandon 
and for which they were unfit. He wrote to Washington, representing 
to him the danger he apprehended from his weakened condition and say- 
ing to him that he could not be. held responsible for whatever serious 
consequences might ensue. 

Sir Henry Clinton saw his opportunity. Sailing up the river from 
New York with three or four thousand troops, he appeared in Tarry- 
town Bay on the 5th of October, and after much manoeuvering landed 
his forces at Verplanck's Point, just below Peekskill, transferred a large 
body of his men to the west side, and filed them off amidst a dense fog 
behind the high banks until they reached the rear of Forts Montgomer}' 
and Clinton, whence they stormed these strongholds which soon fell into 
their possession, though the commission of generals in their report had 
declared them to be inaccessible from that quarter, owing to the very 
mountainous character of the region. The river was now open to the 
enemy, who at once proceeded to ravage the country. Putnam, with the 
advice of a council of officers, removed his headquarters to Fishkill, a 
few miles north of Peekskill, for the safety of^ his little army. The 
immediate commander of Fort Montgomery was Governor Clinton, who, 
as danger was imminent, had been summoned from the legislature at 
Kingsbury by Putnam and was urged to bring a body of militia with 
him. Here, also, Putnam was subsequently blamed for the defeat, but 
Clinton nobly demanded that the censure should fall on himself and not 
on others, and a later court of inquiry decided that the disaster was due 
to a lack of men and not to the neglect or incompetency of those who 
were in command. Says Washington Irving : "The defences of the High- 
lands on which the security of the Hudson depended, were at this time 
weakly garrisoned, some of the troops having been sent off to reinforce 
the armies on the Delaware and in the north." 

Sir Henry returned to New York and Putnam reoccupied Peekskill 
and the neighboring passes. The latter shortly wrote to Washington, 
announcing to him the sad intelligence of his wife's death, but with it, 
also, the glorious news of the surrender of Burgoyne. Five thousand 
men now came to Putnam from the northern army. Washington had 
previously suggested to him a descent upon New York and he now rec- 
ommended it again, but afterward, hearing that Sir Henry was in New 
York and fearing he might join General Howe, he despatched Alexan- 
der Hamilton to Putnam at Peekskill and to General Gates at Albany, 
with orders to them to forward large bodies of troops to the vicinity of 
Philadelphia, the British being in possession of that city. Putnam de- 



ISRAEL PUTNAM. 23 

liiycd compliance with Hamilton's instructions, being perhaps too intent 
on the long-meditated attack upon New York. The youthful martinet, 
scarcely out of his teens, wrote a bitter letter to Washington in conse- 
quence and also an insolent one to the old scarred veteran himself, who 
very properly sent the missive he had received to the commander-in- 
chief, alleging that it contained "unjust and ungenerous reflections," men- 
tioning some of the reasons for the delay, and saying, "I am conscious 
of having done everything in my power to succor you as soon as possi- 
ble." But the order had been a peremptory one, and Washington for 
the first and only time in his life reprimanded his old, trusted compan- 
ion-in-arms, even as he once reprimanded Hamilton himself for an act of 
tardiness by saying to him, "You must change your watch, or I must 
change my aid." Putnam was now unpopular in New York. The peo- 
ple of the state Vere strongly prejudiced against New Englanders, and 
the feeling had notably manifested itself at the time of the "cowardly'' 
and " disgraceful" flight of Connecticut and Massachusetts soldiers at 
Kip's Bay, while it was but natural that this dislike should be warmly 
reciprocated. "Yorkers" and "Yankees" were epithets which were 
freely bandied between the two parties. Hamilton and other leading 
men of his state wanted their Governor to be placed in command. Many 
of them held Putnam responsible for all the misfortunes on the Hudson, 
accused him of being too lenient with the tories in the neighborhood, 
and were unwilling to support the cause of their country so long as he 
retained his position. Colonel Humphreys, whose testimony here is very 
significant, avers that the chief cause of the animosity in question is to be 
referred to Putnam's determined opposition to the dishonesty and selfish 
greed of influential men who were charged with the care of the seques- 
trated property of tory families. But it seemed to Washington all-im- 
portant to hold the state of New York to the support of the army and 
the government, and this was the only reason he presented for the 
change, when, some months after Hamilton's mission to Albany and 
Peekskill, he gave the command to General McDougall. As we shall 
see, Washington still regarded Putnam with unabated friendship and 
afiection, and still honored him with high trusts. 

Meanwhile, in the latter part of the year 1777, Putnam had set on foot 
several expeditious which were more or less successful. During the 
winter he was at the Highlands, Avhence he wrote to Washington, who 
was with his suffering army at Valley Forge ; — "Dubois' regiment is 
unfit to be ordered on duty, there being not one blanket in the regiment ; 
very few have either a shoe or a shirt, and most of them have neither 
stockings, breeches nor overalls." In company with Governor Clinton 
and others, he selected West Point as the site of the chief fortress, and 



24 ISRAEL PUTNAM. 

began vigorously to put the defences of the Hudson on a respectable 
footing. About this time he made a visit to Pomfret to attend to his 
private affairs. After his return and his removal from the command 
of the Highlands, he again went to Connecticut, in obedience to orders, 
to hasten on the new levies of militia from that state for the coming: cam- 
paign. Subsequent to the battle of Monmouth, we find him in charge 
of the right wing of the army, in place of General Lee who was under 
arrest. In the early autumn of 1778, he was again in the neighborhood 
of AVest Point for the defence of the North river. In the winter he was 
posted at Danbury with three brigades, to protect the country lying 
along the Sound, to cover the magazines on the Connecticut river, and 
to reinforce the Highlands in case of need. It was while he was here, 
that he very successfully quelled a serious mutiny that arose among 
some of the troops who had endured much hardship and received no 
pay, and who were preparing to march in a body to Hartford and de- 
mand redress fiom the General Assembly at the point of the bayonet. 
It was in this region, also, that he posted himself with 150 men on the 
brow of a high, steep eminence at Greenwich, or Horse Neck, and, as 
General Tryon advanced towards him with ten times the force, dashed 
on his steed down the precipice to the amazement of his pursuers and 
escaped unharmed, bidding his little company to secure their own safety 
by retiring to a neighboring swamp which was inaccessible to cavalry. 
He immediately collected a party of militia, joined with them his original 
handful, and hung on the rear of Tiyon in his retreat, taking forty or 
fifty of his men as prisoners. These he treated with so much kindness 
that Tryon, as the biographers tell us, addressed to him a handsome note 
in acknowledgment, accompanied with a present of a complete suit of 
clothes, though it does not appear that there was any attempt again to 
supersede the General for such manifest and highly appreciated "aid and 
comfort" to the enemy ! 

General Putnam's military career was now hastening to its close. In the 
spring of 1779, Sir Henry Clinton was preparing for a campaign up the 
North river. Late in May, Washington moved his army towards 
the Highlands from Middlebrook. Putnam crossed the river and joined 
the main body in the Clove, one of the deep defiles, where in the latter 
part of June he was left in immediate command, while Washington took 
up his headquarters at New Windsor, and then, about a month later 
or a few days after the brilliant capture of Stony Point by Wajaie, at 
West Point. Putnam's post was at Buttermilk Falls, two miles below. 
As if it was determined by his great chief, that he should not be sac- 
rificed to the enmity of his foes, he was here given the command of the 
right wing of the army, having under him troops from Pennsylvania, 



ISRAEL PUTNAM. 25 

Maryland and Virginia. It was from July to December, of tliis year, 
that the most important worlcs at AVest Point and in its vicinity were 
chiefly constructed. One of his biographers says ; "Experienced in this 
department, he took an active and efficient part in completing the forti- 
fioiitions which had been laid out under his own eye and the site for which 
had been selected throufjh his aijencv. He had the honor of jrivinj; his 
own name to the principal fort." Sir Henry contented himself with 
depredations in other quarters. 

While the army Avas in winter quarters, Putnam again visited his 
family in Pomfret. On returning to the camp, he was attacked with 
paralysis, which seriously aflfected the use of his limbs on one side and 
which obliged him to retrace his steps and pass the remainder of his days 
at home. He had strong hopes that he might yet be well enough to 
join once more his comrades and engage in active service, but this was 
not to be. Yet he lived for ten years more, was able to take a moderate 
amount of exercise in walking and riding, retained full possession of his 
mental fticulties, was an object of great interest and veneration on the 
part of his neighbors and the people generally, was fond of relating 
stories of the wars in which he had been engaged to groups of young 
and old who were wont to gather around him, and was quick and eager to 
learn all he could about the campaigns in which he could not now par- 
ticipate and ihe affairs of the country he could no longer serve. When 
n 1783 the Treaty of Peace had been concluded between England and 
America and the cause he loved had gloriously triumphed, he sent his 
congratulations to -Washington, from whom he received in reply a beau- 
tiful and touching letter, full of grateful recollections and of the old 
undying friendship. 

"In 1786," says the letter of Hon. Samuel Putnam from which we 
have already twice quoted, "he rode on horseback from Brooklyn to 
Danvers and paid his last visit to his friends there. On his way home, 
he stopped at Cambridge at the college, where tho governor of the col- 
lege paid him much attention. It was in my junior year ; he came into 
my room. His speech was much affected by palsy." 

In the month of May, 1790, he was violently attacked with an inflam- 
matory disease, which from the first he was satisfied would prove mor- 
tal. It was of short duration, continuing but a few days. On the 
29th he passed to his rest, "calm, resigned, and full of cheerful hope." 
And the narrator adds : "The grenadiers of the 11th Regiment, the In- 
dependent Corps of Artillerists and the militia companies in the neigh- 
borhood, assembled each at their appointed rendezvous early on the 
morning of June 1st, and having repaired to the late dwelling house of 
the deceased, a suitable escort was formed, attended by a procession of 



26 ISRAEL PUTNAM. 

Masonic brethren present and a large concourse of respectable citizens, 
which moved to the Congregational meeting-house in Brooklyn ; and, 
after divine service performed by the Rev. Dr. Whitney, all that was 
earthly of a patriot and hero was laid in the silent tomb, under the dis- 
charge of volleys from the infantry, and minute guns from the artillery." 
INIr. Whitney's funeral sermon, afterward published, dwelt touchingly 
upon the exalted virtues and merit of his departed parishioner whom 
he had known intimately for many years, rendering the highest testimony 
to his character as a Christian man, as an ardent lover and noble defen- 
der of his country, and as a most faithful, excellent and beloved citizen, 
husband, father and friend. In due time a monument was erected over 
his grave, bearing an epitaph which was written by the celebrated Rev. 
Timothy Dwight, D.D., President of Yale College, who also knew him 
well, and whose marble inscription states that "he dared to lead where 
any dared to follow," that his "generosity was singular and his honesty 
was proverbial," and that "he raised himself to universal esteem, and 
offices of emitient distinction, by personal worth and a useful life." 

In 1818, long years after the old warrior had sunk to his rest and a 
grateful country had recorded his name high on the roll of her noblest de- 
fenders, the malignant feeling which has been adverted to on a previous 
page and which had all the while lain smothered and rankling in the 
l)reasts of a few surviving officers of the Revolution, at leng'th found 
vent in a published "Account of the Battle of Bunker Hill," by Gen- 
eral Henry Dearborn. It denied to Putnam, not only the command, but 
also any active participation in that engagement ; represented him as 
cowardly, unfaithful, and base in his conduct on the occasion ; and other- 
wise sought to blacken his memory. The public was stung to indigna- 
tion and rage. The press denounced the calumny and its author. 
Notable men came forward to voice the righteous anger of the people, 
and confute the statements and allegations of the accuser. Col. Daniel 
Putnam, the able and highly esteemed sou of the departed veteran, 
whom we have seen with his father at the plow in Pomfret, on the 
arrival of the news from Lexington, April 20, 1775, wrote and pub- 
lished an eloquent and triumphant answer, of which, with another letter 
from the same source, John Adams said ; "Neither myself nor my family 
have been able to read either with dry eyes ;" they "would do honor to 
the pen of Pliny." Other distinguished sons of Connecticut, like Thomas 
Grosvenor and John Trumbull, confirmed the manly and telling reply 
with their weighty words. Hon. John Lowell, of Boston, gave to the 
press a series of trenchant articles in which he exposed the envious and 
vindictive spirit of the attack and effectually riddled the attempted falsi- 
fication of history. Daniel Webster appeared on the scene and in his 



ISRAEL PUTNAM. 27 

own masterful way vindicated the character of the slandered dead. Col. 
Samuel Swett issued his fresh and full account of the battle already 
mentioned, in which he set forth, in detail, the patriotic and heroic part 
which Putnam had taken in it, as the chief of the contending provincial 
forces. Aged soldiers, who were perhaps supposed to have also passed 
away, but who were still lingerers on the stage in many a section of New 
England, rose on every side as from their graves, to testify anew their 
love and loyalty to their lamented leader, and to stamp as false histradu- 
cer's charges and declarations. And the state of Massachusetts had not 
long to wait for an opportunity to set its formal and final seal to the just 
and general verdict. 

Yet Dearborn was not alone in his bitterness at" what he repeatedly and 
ruefully refers to as the "extraordinary popularity," the "universal popu- 
larity," or the "ephemeral and unaccountable popularity" of Putnam ; 
nor was he alone responsible for the groundless and wicked aspersions 
which he made. The substance of these first appeared, as early as the 
year 1810, in a sketch of General Stark, published in a New Hampshire 
paper which was not less hostile to Putnam than it was favorable to the 
"hero of Beiniington," the editor's personal friend. Stark, who was an" 
able officer and a very brave man in battle, was the reputed author or 
source of the accusations. He was a person of strong passions and preju- 
dices, was sensitive to slights and had on several occasions during his 
military career thrown up his command when he had thought that his 
own claims to preferment had been overlooked, or when others had been 
promoted and he had not. He was one of those who had been made 
unhappy by Putnam's high honors and great popularity ; and the annoy- 
ance yras not a little intensified by the circumstance that he had been 
worsted in a court trial, at which a case of Putnam's interference with 
certain irregularities among the New Hampshire troops was brought 
forward for examination and decision. The enmity seems never to have 
died out. It was shared not only by Dearborn, who was a captain in 
Stark's regiment at Bunker Hill, but also by Major Caleb Stark, the 
colonel's or general's son. One of these, at least, was at length busy in 
seeking supports for their strange story of the battle and in privately 
disseminating it abroad as he found opportunity. During the 3'ear 
following the great event, Stark, the father, appears to have given his 
version of it to the infamous General James Wilkinson. "When, in 
1815, the latter was preparing for publication what McMaster, in his new 
History of the people of theUnited /States, justly describes as his "three 
ponderous volumes of memoirs, as false as any yet written by man," — 
he wrote to Major Stark for fuller information about the occurrences of 
June 17, 1775, asking him for aid in procuring subscriptions for his work. 



28 ISRAEL PUTNAM. 

and informing him of his desire or purpose to correct certain prevalent 
misconceptions concerning matters of Revolutionary history ! He had 
already heard from Dearborn. 

The bait took. The major was pleased, sent him some things that he 
wanted, referred him to Dearborn for more, and wished him abundant 
success in his literary enterprise. And then it was, that Wilkinson em- 
braced in his "false" and "ponderous" volumes an account of the battle 
as wiitten by himself, and as based upon the testimony of this little 
coterie of Putnam's enemies. It is with reference to these memoirs, 
published in 1816, that Richard Frothingham himself says, in his Siege 
of Boston; "This work contains the earliest reflections on General Put- 
nam's conduct on this occasion, either printed or in manuscript, that 
I have met." The historian had not seen the New Hampshire paper of 
1810. Its detraction had died an early death. Wilkinson's renewal of 
it, six years later, also produced no particular efiect on the public mind. 
It was left to Dearborn to stir it into life again, and it was only when one 
who had creditably filled so many prominent positions as he had held, 
dragged it forth once more, two years later yet, for wider notice, charged 
with a still more venomous spirit, that it received any general attention, 
or that it was deemed worth the while to brand it as it deserved. And 
now it remains to be added, that it is just these perversions and falsifi- 
cations of the truth, which were prompted by such unworthy motives 
and had such ignoble beginnings, and which were then brought forward in 
their more amplified and ofiensive form forty-three years after the battle 
of Bunker Hill and more than a quarter of a century after General Put- 
nam and the vast majority of his contemporaries had passed from earth, 
but only a few months after the death of Colonel Humphreys, his old 
personal friend, his intimate companion in war, and up to the time of 
this juncture his sole biographer — a circumstance, of which Mr. W^eb- 
ster makes mention — that, in lack of better material, were seized upon 
by partisans of Prescott as props for their new theory of his supreme 
command on the ever memorable day. Whoever will read attentively 
what these friends and eulogists of the Pepperell soldier have written 
about the battle cannot fail to see what eager and extensive use they 
have made of the discredited testimony, and with what painstaking and 
disingenuous skill they have woven it into their narratives for the end 
in view. Certain Stark men, of New Hampshire, in their antipathy to 
Putnam, feel that they can safely enough extol Prescott, his suppositi- 
tious rival, while yet they labor to lift to proud preeminence their own 
hero and essay to remove the one fatal obstacle by alleging that the 
army in the field, as a whole, was without an actual and responsible 
tead. The Prescott men regard the latter contention with compla- 



ISRAEL PUTNAM. 2d 

cency, so long as their own favorite is exalted, and common cause is 
made against Pntnam. Whatever jealousy exists between the two 
parties is held in abeyance, as both alike are made to realize that there 
is another commander whose claims are paramount to those of either 
Stark or Prescott, and whom it is for the interest of both parties to dis- 
parajre, to ignore and to get rid of. Hence their constant and studied 
endeavor, while they may not still ventiu*e the more Ijrutal defama- 
tions that were found to be so unprofitable in earlier years of the cen- 
tury, to minimize as much as possible Putnam's best action or service ; 
to magnify and give credence to idle things that have been said to his 
prejudice ; to conceal or weaken the force of the evidence that goes to 
establish his supremacy ; and, as in some recent instances, to leave him 
out of sight altogether, not even his name being mentioned, as if he had 
no part or lot in the matter. And this is the way that some men write 
history. A late cycloramic representation of the battle, following such 
authorities, made Prescott and the redoubt at the extreme right of the 
lines the only real object of attention or interest, had nothing to show 
of the tremendous conflict at the rail-fence, and Dearborn-like placed 
Putnam far in the safe background, quietly sitting on his horse, and ap- 
parently engaged in conversation with a bystander and unconcerned" 
about what was jjoins: on in full view before him. 

But General Putnam, however he has himself been maligned or 
wronged, never by word or act betrayed any such feeling of jealousy, 
hatred, or revenge towards others. He was swift and severe to upbraid 
and chastise those who were cravens or skulkers in the hour of imminent 
peril. But the records furnish no proof that he ever regarded with even 
the slightest envy or rancor any of his comrades. He never sought to 
undermine the good reputation or the fair fame of those who deserved 
well of their country. He was not troubled at their popularity or pro- 
motions, and as little did he seek by unworthy means or with a selfish 
spirit his own advantage or distinction. The honors and the praise 
that came to him were the free, unbought and spontaneous gifts of the 
state, the government and the people, whom he so gallantly served, 
and to whom he so gladly devoted the strength of his earlier and later 
years. He was as kind as he was generous, and he was as brave as he 
was magnanimous. Foremost in the strife, he Avas also last at the post 
of danger when others fled the scene. He knew how to spare a fallen 
foe, and he knew as well how to be loyal and true to his friends. He 
wore no masks, but was frank, open and honest, and as transparent as the 
day. His was no dark, sinister, tricky or deceitful nature ; and Presi- 
dent Dwight most truthfully said of him ; — "His word was regarded as 
an ample security for anything for which it was pledged, and his up- 
rightness commanded absolute confidence." 



\ 



30 ISRAEL PUTNAM. 

He was not without his faults, defects, or mistakes. Neither were 
any of his contemporaries, however great or good. If, like others, he 
was bluff and unlettered, it may be remembered that he had but few 
early school or social advantages, and that very much of his maturer 
life was spent on the frontiers or in the camp. If his words lacked pol- 
ish or refinement, they were, at least, clear and vigorous and to the 
j)oint.i 

If he was not one of the great commanders or strategists, yet was he 
a bold and fiery leader and iuspirer of men, whose rare natural genius 
and aptitudes for military service were everywhere recognized and 
always called into requisition, and whose more daring, and dashing kind 
of warfare was often quite as necessary and useful as the faculty which 
he may not have so fully possessed for arranging complicated plans and 
combining numerous forces for a more extensive scene of operaticms. 
Washington said of him, that he was "a most valuable man and a fine 
executive ofiicer,"and it has been seen how frequently and how continu- 
ously he assigned to him the most important trusts he had at his dis- 
posal, until the growing infirmities of age unfitted him for the burden. 
Against all attempts of smaller men, who did not know him, or have 
not learned who or what he was, to write him down by belittling his 
capacity or his patriotism, we place that simple and sufiicing testimony 
of one who knew him long and well, who was "first in war, first in 
peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen," and whose judgment 
may perhaps be not unreasonably preferred to that of the critics and 
censors of a later time. 

Like so many of the military officers of his day, Putnam, it is said, 
often indulged in profane language. If he did, he had the manliness 
and grace openly to confess and renounce his sin and express his sorrow 
for it, thereby giving to all who villif}', as well as all who blaspheme, a 
good example which they may well follow. Whatever forbidden word 
he may have made use of under the sway of vehement passion, and 
amidst the heat and stress of battle, few men were at heart more rev- 
erent of God and sacred things than was he. 

A distinguished grandson of the General, Judge Judah Dana, who 
was formerly United States Senator from Maine, wrote the following de- 
scription of the subject of our sketch : 

1 We copy, by way of illustration, the characteristic letter which General Putnam wrote to Sir 
Henry Clinton in reply to an insolent and threatening message sent him by that British conimander 
under a tiag of truce, demanding the release and.return of a tory spy who had been caught in the 
American camp. Jt runs as follows : 

" Headquarters, 7 August, 1777. 

" Sir: Edmund Palmer, an officer in the Enemy's service, was taken as a spy, lurking within our 
lines. He has been tried as a spy, condemned as a spy, and shall be executed as a spy, and the flag 
is ordered to depart immediately. 

"Israel, Putnam. 

'P. S.— He has been accordingly hanged." 



ISRAEL PUTNAM. 31 

"In his person, for height about the middle size, very ferect, thick-set, muscular and 
firm in every part. His countenance was open, strong, and animated ; the features of 
his face large, well proportioned to each other and to his whole frame; his teeth fair 
and sound till death. His organs and senses were all exactly fitted for a warrior ; he 
heard quickly, saw to an immense distance, and though he sometimes stammered in 
coiTversation, his voice was remarkably heavy, strong and commanding. Though 
facetious and dispassionate in private, when animated in the heat of battle his counte- 
nance was fierce and terrible, and his voice like thunder. His whole manner was admira- 
bly adapted to inspire his soldiers with courage and confidence, and his enemies with 
terror. The faculties of his mind were not inferior to those of his body; his penetra- 
tion was acute; decision rapid, yet remarkably correct; and the more desperate the 
situation, the more collected and undaunted. With the courage of & lion, he had a heart 
that melted at the sight of distress ; he could never witness sufi"eriug in any human be- 
ing without becoming a sufi'erer himself. Martial music roused him to the highest 
pitch, while solemn sacred music sent him into tears. In his disposition he was open 
and generous almost to a fault, and in his social relations he was never excelled." 

Of the many other just and eloquent tributes which eminent Ameri- 
cans have paid to General Putnam's memory, the following from Wash- 
ington Irving may fitly conclude our story : 

"A yeoman warrior, fresh from the plough, in the garb of rural labor; a patriot 
brave and generous, but rough and ready, who thought not of himself in time of dan- 
ger, but was ready to serve in any way, and to sacrifice official rank and self-glorifica- 
tion to the good of the cause. He was eminently a soldier for the occasion. His name" 
has long been a favorite one with young and old, one of the talismanic names of the 
Kevolution, the very mention of which is like the sound of a trumpet. Such names 
are the precious jewels of our history, to be garnered up among the treasures of the 
nation, and kept immaculate from the tarnishing breath of the cynic and the doubter." 



APPENDIX. 

GENERAL PUTNAM AND HIS TROOPS ON PROSPECT HILL. 

The following is taken from the Salem Begister, of August 14, 1875. (See in con- 
nection, page 17 of the sketch. Also Am. Archives, 4th series, vol. ii, p. 1687.) 

"Major-General Putnam, one hundred years ago on the 21st of July, had aU the Con- 
tinental troops under his command assembled on Prospect Hill, near Cambridge, Mass., 
and had the declaration by the Continental Congress, setting forth the causes and 
necessity of taking up arms, read to them, and the Connecticut flag unfurled. The 
Salem Gazette reprinted quite recently, from its old flies, this account of the aQ"air : 

'Last Tuesday morning, according to orders issued the day before by Major-Gen. 
Putnam, all the Continental troops under his immediate command assembled on Pros- 
pect Hill, when the Declaration of the Continental Congress was read, after Avhich an 
animated and pathetic address to the army was made by the Rev. Mr. Leonard, Chap- 
lain to General Putnam's regiment, and succeeded by a pertinent prayer ; when General 
Putnam gave the signal, and the whole army shouted their loud Amen by three cheers ; 
immediately upon Avhich a cannon was fired from the fort, and the standard lately sent 
to General Putnam was exhibited flourishing in the air, bearing on one side this motto, 
"An Appeal to Heaven;" and on the other side, "Qui Transtulit Sustinet." The whole 
was conducted with the utmost decency, good order and regularity, and to the univer- 
sal acceptance of all present, and the Philistines on Bvinker Hill heard the shout of the 
Israelites, and being very fearful, paraded themselves in battle array.' " 

Says Samuel Adams Drake, in his Old Landmarks of Middlesex: "On New Year's 
Day, 1776, the Union Flag, bearing thirteen stripes, was hoisted at Prospect Hill, and 
saluted with thirteen guns. This was the birthday of the new Continental Army of 
undying fame. Now, for the first time, the thirteen united Colonies had a common 



BATTERY ON WINTER HILL. 

In connection with the footnote statement, on page 106, that, after the Battle of 
Bunker Hill, General Stark and his brave ]Sew Hampsftire men letired to Winter Hill, 
the following wall inscription at the recently erected battery on the latter summit, 
now within the limits of Somerville, may appropriately be copied here. 

"THIS BATIERY 
was erected by the City in 1885 and is within the lines of the 

FRENCH REDOUBT 

which was thrown up by the American troops under General Israel Putnam, immed- 
iately after the Battle of Bunker Hill, and later became a part of the besieging lines of 
Boston in 1775-6. 
The guns were donated by Congress, and were in service during the civil war. 

Erected, 1890," 



DATES OF GEN. ISRAEL PUTNAJU'S DEATH AND BURIAL. 

In many of the biographical accounts of General Putnam, a strange error as to the 
dates of his death and burial has been perpetuated for three quarters of a century. 
^The first sketch of the life of the old hero, written by his friend and comrade, Col. 

(32) 



APPENDIX. 33 

David Humphreys, and published in 1788, made no mention of his demise, for the very 
good reason that he was still living at that time and still survived until 1790. A neAV 
edition of the biography was puWished in 1818, with an Appendix containing a some- 
what extended account of the battle of Bunker Hill by Col. Samuel Swett. But im- 
mediately appended to the earlier part of the contents of the book were a few pages, 
narrating the circumstances of the veteran's final departure and of his funeral obse- 
quFes, and giving also the address which was delivered at his grave by Dr. Albigence 
AValdo and a full copy of the epitaph which had been written by President Dwight and 
inscribed on his tomb. It is evident that the account of the death and burial, as thus 
published in 1818, was not written by Colonel Humphreys, as he himself died early in 
that year, and as he was too familiar with the whole story of his old commander to make 
the mistakes which seem to have had here their origin. Who it was that blundered, 
we do not know. He records that the General was taken violently ill on the 17th of 
May, 1790, died on the 19th, and was buried on the 21st. Both of the last dates are wrong, 
however it may be with regard to the first. The copied epitaph also incorrectly gives 
the day of his death, as the 19th, and this error, thus made and repeated iu the volume 
referred to, has crept thence into nearly if not quite all the fuller biographical accounts 
and also into many of the briefer sketches, which have since appeared. 

It would seem thai; the hand that copied the monument inscription must have made 
the original mistake, writing the 19th for the 29th, as the marble slab says the latter, 
not the former. Whoever concluded Col. Humphrey's narrative may have followed 
the copyist in the epitaph as taken for his pages. Subsequent writers would find it 
much more convenient to turn for facts to the well known and extensively circulated 
book than to repair to the cemetery record, or even to consult the small pamphlet which 
contains the funeral discourse by Rev. Mr. Whitney, and which had been priuted,_ 
doubtless in a limited edition, twenty-eight years before Humphrey and Swett appeared 
together, for Whitney as well as Dwight is correct in regard to this particular date. 
But once the erroneous date of the 19th having been accepted, the day of the funeral, 
as being the 21st, may have been purely a conjecture. 

The Danvers Historical Society, in its commemoration of the one hundredth anni- 
versary of the death of General Putnam, followed the biographers and other authori- 
ties, no one at the time, among all those who participated in the occasion, or kncAV 
about it, calling the day of observance in question. Shortly afterward the president 
of the society received a letter from Rev. Judah Dana of Rutland, Vt., a great grand- 
son of the hero, saying that the 29th, and not the 19th, was the real anniversary; as 
evidenced by his copy of Mr. Whitney's now very rare pamphlet — a treasure which a 
little later he donated to that institution. A subsequent photogravure impression of 
the marble slab, as contained in the published proceedings at 'the dedication of the 
recently erected equestrian statue of General Putnam at Brooklyn, Conn., confirmed 
the statement. It could hardly be that Whitney and Dwight both Avere at fault. Yet 
to settle the question for my own mind, I have examined the files of old pnpers for 
the year 1790, in the New England Historical Genealogical Society collections, and have 
there found in the Iiide2)endence Chronicle and Universal Advertiser, of June 10, 1790, the 
following account, which, taken in connection with the two authorities just mentioned, 
sufficiently shows that the great majority of later writers have copied one from another 
without applying to the true and original sources of information. In quoting, for my 
o-wn sketch of Putnam, a passage relating to the death and funeral from the unknown 
hand that finished Humphrey's story, I have simply changed the dates, in conformity 
to this early record, which may be of interest to those who have read the foregoing 
pages. 

"major-general PUTNAM. 

"Brooklyn, Conn., June 3, 1790. Saturday last died here, after a short illness, in the 
73d year of his age, that celebrated hero, patriot, and piiilanthropist, iskakl pl'TXam, 



34 APPENDIX. 

Esq., Major-General in the late Continental army. He enjoyed his reason to the last 
moments of his life, and with remarkable cheerfulness and solid satisfaction, left this 
for the everlasting rewards of a better and more glorioiis country, and on Tuesday his 
funeral was attended by the largest and most respectable collection of the inhabitants 
ever known here on a like occasion. 

"After a well adapted sermon vpas delivered by the Rev. Josiah Whitney, the pro- 
cession moved to the burying ground, in the following order : 

Company of Grenadiers, 

Militia of the town, with keversed arms, 

Music, 

Company of Artillery, 

Free Masons in the badges of their order. 

Bearers < The Corpse > Bearers, 

Mourners, 

The Clergy, 

The church of Brooklyn, 

Military officers. 

Inhabitants. 

"When the procession had arrived at the burying ground, the troops opening to the 
right and left, the Masons passed onto the grave — and after performing their accus- 
tomed ancient ceremonies, and pronouncing a short eulogium on the character of the 
deceased, the Grenadiers advanced, and fired three platoons, which was succeeded by 
a discharge from the artillery. The whole was concluded with that order and decorum, 
which the love and respect of the inhabitants inspired." 

Dr. Albigence Waldo's eulogium, above referred to, was published in the Independent 
Chronicle of June 2i, 1790, two weeks later, and was taken from Thomas' Massachusetts 
Spy. 

Consulting an old almanac, for the year 1790, I find that "June 3," the date of the 
communication to the Chronicle, was Thursday. "Saturday last", the day of departure, 
must therefore have been May 29th, and accordingly "Tuesday," the day of the funeral, 
must have been June 1st, as stated in my sketcli. A. P. P. 



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